Why not turn them into diesel?
It is essentially infeasible, with present technology, to replace significant amounts of our transport fuel requirements with biofuels grown in temperate climates. Because of this, enthusiasts for the technology instead point to the potential for digesting cellulose (the stuff that makes up the structural bits of plants, like tree trunks) and turning it into ethanol, or using fast-growing algae to make biodiesel. But there are alternatives.
A German company, Choren, proposes to use waste biomass like straw and wood waste to make synthetic diesel which it calls SunDiesel. Their process for doing this is first to convert the biomass into syngas – a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. In principle, there’s nothing new about it – it’s a modernised, more efficient version of wood gas generators from the 19th century, which reappeared both here and in Europe during the petrol rationing of WWII. From there, the Fischer-Tropsch process – again, used in WWII (with coal-derived syngas as the feedstock) by the Germans and in apartheid South Africa when they couldn’t get enough petroleum, is used to make high-quality diesel.
From what I can tell, this technology is pretty promising. There’s enough potential feedstock available to supply serious quantities of fuel. The basic technologies have been around for a long time and are known to work (the gasifiers have been working for producing biogas for electricity generation for years, and the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is in industrial use in several places). The ratio of energy in to energy out, unlike the case of corn ethanol, is excellent – in the order of 10 to 1, accordinjg to Choren. And, according to their FAQ, their “beta plant”, producing 16 million litres of diesel per year, will come into operation this year.
There’s a lot of technical discussion, including whether it would be better to simply burn the biomass to generate electricity to power electric vehicles, at this thread at Green Car Congress about the siting of Choren’s next, industrial-scale plant – to hopefully begin construction in 2008.
So where/when can I get a bumper sticker that says “my car runs on straw-feminists”?
The problem with biofuels from a human viewpoint is that they work.
This has seen the price for corn as fuel has increase and people in developing countries are seeing their food costs rise.
Also in The Phillipines (from memory) rainforest is being cleared to grow oil palms and in Mexico farmers are burning their agave crops to grow corn for fuel instead.
The best I can offer is a deep sigh.
oh…here’s a useful link
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003786.html
What area of crops would be required to create a certain amount of energy (e.g. to power X type of vehicle Y distance at Z speed)? How much would it cost, less subsidies? Would growing this involve devegetation, irrigation and other environmentally counterproductive practices?
Just askin’. Whenever I hear sugarcane growers talking about biodiesel and ethanol I can feel another subsidy-bludge coming on.
Andrew E: it depends enormously on what crop, in what location, and how it’s farmed.
Ethanol from corn or wheat with present distillation technology is a joke – you only get slightly more energy in than you get out. Some people have even calculated you get less energy in than out. See this Wikipedia page for some useful information. Ethanol from sugarcane is much more efficient, but sugarcane is a nasty crop that likes a lot of pesticide and fertilizer.
That’s why this technology is a lot better, because it can make much more efficient use of a lot wider variety of plant material, including plenty that’s currently just waste.
I think that the issue of land clearing for growing crops for bio-diesel will always be a sticking point.
If the only product used was waste products that would normally be discarded, then bio-diesel sit more comfortably with me. I guess its just like clearing rainforest in brazil to produce cattle for mchuman consumption.
The best studies show that Ethanol from grain has a positive NEV of around 1.2 to 1.3 times the input energy. Many studies that have produced negative results have serious flaws in methodology and assumptions used – and like a lot of contentious issues these studies are the ones that are dragged up to produce doubts about the industry.
As well, many early studies have been well and truly rendered outdated by modernisation, both on the farm and in the biorefinery. For example, molecular sieves have reduced power consumption within the plants markedly.
Importantly, if you look at a comparison with fossil fuels, petrol produces around 0.8 of the energy used to produce it. That is, we have a negative energy balance using petroleum fuels. Coal fired electricity is particularly bad, at around 0.4. While ever we use petrol as a fuel source, we are far better off replacing it with ethanol, on an energy basis.
This is bad enough, without calculating the health toll of using petroleum products. Ethanol as a transport fuel produces far less toxic byproducts than petroleum based fuels.
Syngas has been around for a long time, and will be a part of the mix of petroleum replacements. The energy balance is around the same as those projected for cellulosic (~10:1), which is obviously better than the current technology. Cellulosic plants will probably be cheaper to build and operate, in the long term.
Syngas’s role, I think, will be more along the lines of producing substitutes for other petroleum based products such as plastics and other vital petrochemicals. Here, because you can produce a very basic building block , you can manipulate the downstream production to produce just about any petrochemical now produced.
This will be vital – and probably more profitable for the syngas plants than producing fuel. Roughly 4-5% of oil goes to plastic manufacture – and roughly 4-5% more is used to power the plastics industry – this could all be replaced using Syngas refineries.
The other big area I think SYngas will be the primary supplier to will be jet fuel – ethanol is not a suitable replacement for avtur, and this is something like 30% of oil refinery output! A syngas plant could be turning out a better tuned fuel for the aviation industry because they can “design” their final product.
The more interesting question, that has been raised by others above, is feedstock. What and where are the feedstocks for any of these biofuels coming from?
BilB where are you? Hello?
Robert Rapier is Calling All Ethanol Proponents over at The Oil Drum. He seems to be a bit more positive about cellulosic ethanol these days.
Also he has a post on The Problem With Biobutanol .
BigBob, are you tripping? If petroleum fuels really had a negative energy balance (and ethanol was positive) we would have moved to ethanol long ago. Simple economics would have dictated it.
The energy returned on energy invested was around 100:1 in the early days of oil when they used to stick a hole in the ground and watch the oil gush out. Now its more like 10:1 for Saudi crude, and worse for offshore crude.
BigBob: putting in one unit of energy to get 1.2 or 1.3 units is a razor-thin margin to be running on. It leaves SFA margin for things like transporting the ethanol long distances and the like.
As to your question about land, it’s astronomical. Biofuels proponent BillB and various others have done a number of rounds on the topic. Basically, with current sugar-to-ethanol distillation, you’d need to use most of Australia’s agricultural land to produce enough biofuels to replace our energy needs.
If you can use cellulose, either through making syngas or cellulosic ethanol methods, the number goes up radically. For purposes of comparison, if all the timber being harvested from Australia’s pine plantations was instead used to produce SunDiesel, that would get you about 8% of Australia’s current diesel requirements.
As far as cellulosic ethanol versus syngas, this seems to be all but here and now, whereas cellulosic ethanol seems to be still relying on all sorts of new and very unproven biochemistry.
The biochemistry part is done, trust me. Cellulosic breakdown by enzymes can be achieved currently and cost effectievely. There are some issues with finding good C5 sugar fermenting yeast, but that is no biggie.
The problem is not the actual process once you get the cellulose out, it is the pre-processing and the logistical factors that are the big stumbling blocks.
Syngas will be a part of the energy mix – but as I detailed above, I think it will fill the void that the other biofuels can’t. In fact, some Syngas plants will probably be built in conjunction with cellulosic ethanol plants – there are synergies that can be exploited by having them both as part of the process. You can almost build an analog of a petrochemical refinery then.
The major problems for all biomass exploitation is feedstock and feedstock logistics and pre-processing. This will effect whatever technology is chosen.
One of the drawbacks of Syngas are the very high temperatures and pressures involved – these are far more complex plants than a grain ethanol or cellulosic ethanol plant to run. The feedstocks are bulky and relatively difficult to transport. Hence the plants will be near the feedstock and not near the market as most oil refineries are. The plants will be, predominantly, regionally based. Syngas will be a lot harder to build and operate in a regional environment.
As I have stated, biomass fuels and how they are produced will be a horses for courses proposition. There will be a lot of consideration about the location and type of facility that is put up.
It isn’t an either/or question, although there are people on both sides pushing for their technology to be the “winner”. I don’t see that happening, both methods have advantages and disadvantages.
I’m right here Carbonsink.
Clearly Robert hasn’t been reading all of the posts (and I can understand that) to make his opening comment which is plainly false. As I can demonstrate from available information per hectare yields of 20,000 litres are proveable. The area to provide Australia with E85 is as little as 1,000,000 hectares, and most of that land is available if it is in the public interest. But right beside all of that the electric car technology is moving forward as is the technology for electric planes.
http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560
http://cafefoundation.org/v2/pav_electricaircraft_2007_presentations.php
and boring old ethanol
http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/14/news/international/bc.brazil.ethanol.cellulose.reut/index.htm
http://www.blonnet.com/2003/03/27/stories/2003032701980200.htm
energy spin
http://energyspin.com/?p=43
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=54319
bush wants all of the petrol
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/03/business/web0303.ethanol.php
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=5481
brazil talks to Australia 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200408/s1179049.htm
http://www.dedini.com.br/en/turnkey.html
Carbonsink,
I’m not tripping, have a look at page 11 of this report by the US DoE
~1.2 MJ energy per 1 MJ energy from the gasoline, equates to near 0.8.
The reason why the economics for oil stack up isn’t the energy budget, it’s the overall cost of production is lower.
We pay the energy cost for having something that is easy to access – electricity generation from coal is the same deal.
The report is on biodiesel and diesel, but the energy figures for petrol from fossil fuels will be in the same ballpark.
BigBob, I was right, you are tripping.
Slightly more politely, BB, the figures you’ve gotten from that point are misleadingly presented.
If you did the same calculation for biodiesel as those guys are doing for petrodiesel, you’d have to count the energy from the sun shining on the fields where the crops were grown.
In a nutshell the relevant ratio is the amount of useful energy you get out for the paid-for energy you put in.
Robert Merkel
It doesn’t have to. Wonder how much research has been done on producing pest & disease resistant, high-yield soft canes in the past half-century? [All sugarcane grown in Australia nowadays is hard cane].
I’m with BilB.
In another life I posted this on Harry Clarke’s site – if anyone is interested, follow the links therein to lots of interesting sites on biofuels, mainly US based.
Link
Oil-yielding algae is an area that we should definitely look at. Its per ha yield is many times that of candlenuts, for example. The “crop” requires brackish water and carbon dioxide to grow. (!) It seems to me that oil-yielding algae would be an ideal crop to grow around coal fired power stations because some of the C02 emissions could be recycled into growing algae; and an adjunct biodiesel generator could plug into the grid already in place.
Also, there are vast areas of WA wheatfields which are no longer usable for growing food or fodder because of salinity. The farmers there (Katanning and so on) are desperate for something to make themselves viable apart from growing saltbush (which sheep will eat, albeit reluctantly).
A few years ago I wrote a major report on salinity in WA for Australian Geographic. The question of oil yeilding algae hadn’t crosed my mind then, nor to the farmers I interviwed but I remember how desperate they were for something, anything. It may be worthwhile revisting their problems because from them could come the political push to make it happen.
As far as oil-yielding algae go, I can’t recall where it was off the top of my head (might have been on Robert Rapier’s R-squared blog) with comments from a guy who headed the US government’s research program into oil from algae back in the 70s and 80s. He seemed to think that it’s a lot harder than it sounds, and a lot harder than some of the current companies working on it are claiming.
Hi Robert, BigBob, Steve, Andrew, Carbonsink, Ed, Ken. Its good to see you all here again today…….cup of tea anybody?
On the topic, I have decided that my carbon responsibility is for 15% of the motive fuel that I use and 13% if the electricity that I consume. 85% of the motive fuel should be ethanol and 87% (at least) of my electricity should be coming from the sun. I have collected the information on the techniques to economically achieve this goal and have presented the information to my local Federal MP (the chief government whip) as well as my state MP (the state minister for environment) on several occasions over a number of years. The government have made no attempt to disprove the validity of the claims, but took the time to point out (on a number of occaisions) that Australia is a leader on global warming action by indreasing its (our) emissions by 8%. What can I say. I’ve bought a bigger car, I’m buying a small plane, I’m installing an air conditioner into my factory and leaving the lights (I have replaced most of the bulbs under my control with energy savers as directed by the government) on at home.
You just never know what opportunities are going to come along. I’ve just has a conversation with the principle of the stainless steel business whose factory is behind mine. By way of scale they have just spent 2.8 million dollars in an equipment upgrade which included a new 7 kilowatt laser and several other CNC machines, along with building modifications. So I was printing out the Dedini information for him suggesting that he might initiate a conversation with a view to cooperation on future projects (stainless steel being the common factor). Out of the blue he says that he has just purchased a plot of land in the north of NSW in the cane growing area, very specifically with the intention to get involved with ethanol production. He verified that the information on mill yields that I had discovered the other week was similar to what he had researched from other sources. So now I have the very real prospect of having a local supply of E85. I’ve taken on the task of confronting my MP (Kerry Bartlett) to find out what would be the legal status of a club supplier of ethanol. This could be very interesting. Enhance ethanol have a technician that they brought out from Brazil to fit flex fuel kits to vehicles. So the pieces are falling into place. It may not take the time for a full crop cycle before my neighbour has ethanol to sell, he might very well get the process under way by buying ethanol from the open market. If that pans out then there is half of my environmental responsibility resolved. But if the government is going to make it illegal for me to buy ethanol from my neighbour then the responsibility falls back squarely on their shoulders. We will see what happens.
Here is a little snippet that I discovered as I was looking around to see if I can buy ethanol now and blend my own E85.
http://www.enhanceethanol.com.au/documents/e10_mandate.pdf
European biomass-to-energy is not a totally straight forward issue. Everyone would be aware of the European farm subsidies that have dominated european politics for several decades. but many people may not be aware that these subsidies, which are really a means of protecting the unique European countryside from urban sprall, have now become a land management subsidy. Because of this free hand out to “clear land” owners the European community is reasonably entitled to require land subsidy collectors to hand over and surplus biomass for energy conversion. By so doing European land holders can be free of the criticism by farming competitor countries vying for access to European markets. With applied carbon taxes European Bioenergy may even become a cost neutral endeavour.
BilB wrote:
He he. I bought an 8% bigger car, an 8% bigger house, and plugged in 8% more appliances so we could meet our Kyoto target. Hey BilB, have you read Scorcher yet? It will make your blood boil.
Robert, here’s the post about algal biodiesel by John Benemann on Robert Rapier’s blog (May 14, 2007):
Algal Biodiesel: Fact or Fiction?
Apologies for being impolite, but he is tripping if he believes those numbers
That Choren website gives an overly sunny picture of their plans, I suspect.
That straw serves a vital purpose in conditioning the soil that enables the next years crop.
It might also be called forest.
“Biomass” is a resource in short supply. Ask the 1 billion below the hunger line. Grass and wood, where they are currently plentiful but unexploited by humans. play important roles in maintaining the overall ecological system. Strip-mine that stuff and watch new deserts bloom.
Don’t take me the wrong way Carbonsink, my direction is totally zero emissions, I am not going to live like a hermit to do it.
I haven’t looked at the algal biodiesel thing but I can see massive potential there. The concentrating solar thermal energy collection structure offers an opportunity for coenergy conversion. I was, originally, proposing biomass producing tunnel greenhouses co-habiting the same realestate as the collector structure but thinking a little more laterally I can imagine (we are really moving back in time here to wake up Jules Vernes) a light/heat (this would be a specially formulated light collecting plastic powder of the type that many toys are made of nowadays suspended in a fluid) collecting fluid circulating in the shadow of the oil pipes of the concentrating solar thermal collectors. This energised light and heat loaded fluid would then circulate through algae tanks which could be underground. Similarly (without knowing much about the oil extraction process) I can imagine a micro, fully automated, diesel producing machine attached to factories with collectors on the roofs.
It is important to not write energy possibilities off. There are 7 billion thinking people on this planet. It could be that the one group of minds that can solve the problems have not yet focussed to create the elegant solution that will work. One of the most exciting new developments from my point of view are the new biodegradeable batteries that convert straight sugar into electricity. A beautiful solution. Think of the technology advances in just the last five years in so many areas.
Negative people are easy to find. There are many beautiful thinkers as well, they are just not as loud.
On electric vehicles, there is a guy in Sydney here who made his own electric scooter from standard automotive components. He rode it to and from work every day to an engineering factory near to a business where I was contracting at the time. It had been dubbed the “green machine”. It was very cleverly put together. Later when I had more machinery and developed the interest in an electric scooter I went back to find this guy, but he had moved on, and privacy rules prevented me from getting contact details. If you know of any working designs from standard parts I am keen to build one.
Ken Scott,
Thanks for the links. That bioking.nl company is awesome. I just passed that on to our research (chemical engineering) associate and he was right onto it. He was also talking about a film reactor (benchtop size device) that can produce .5 litre of biodiesel per second. Further to my suggestion of using a light collecting slurry to move light into algae tanks he replied with “you can also use optic fibre to do the same thing”!! Duh, why didn’t I think of that? Once this stuff gets rolling it will really move.
Bilb: you can buy electric scooters off the shelf these days for about $3000. They travel at a top speed of about 60 km/h. There’s the Vectrix which will do 100km/h and has a longer range, but that will cost more than a small car.
wbb: that same biomass is what Mark Diesendorf plans to burn for electricity when he claims that renewables can meet all our energy demands and we don’t need nukes.
Snark aside, it’s not essential to put wheat straw back in the soil. Cutting hay doesn’t plough the stalks back into the soil and pastures grow back just fine.
Robert, strip-mined pastures grow back fine when they are fertilised. Fertiliser is created by consuming fossil fuels. Biomass does not avoid the fossil fuel depletion problem.
But it’s the amount of fertiliser that matters. Sugar cane is a very heavily fertilised crop, and the life cycle analyses for turning it into bioethanol come out well in front.
Furthermore, the reason that the Haber process uses fossil fuels (natural gas, mostly) is to get hydrogen. In the past, that hydrogen was obtained by electrolysis of water from hydropower, and there’s no reason why electrolysis powered by renewable (or nuclear
) energy couldn’t be used in the future. See this Wikipedia article for a fascinating piece of WWII derring-do based on a byproduct of the electrolysis process….
THE SQUARED BLOG discussion was very interesting and educational, albeit with a lot of post hocery, appeals to authority/reputation and false dichotomy, as such discussions usually tend to indulge in.
With regard to open pond methodology, it was claimed that ponds would evaporate very quickly and thus deprive the microalgae of a growing medium. But in the case of WA wheatfelds where salinity is endemic, the groundwater aquifers have almost limitless supplies of brackish water and in low lying areas they come out to the surface. Solar panel driven pumps could replenish the ponds indefinitely.
Where is the money going to come from? Well, there is conderable money being spent in WA and SA on finding uses for brackish groundwater now inundating once-productive farming land – such as growing vitamins, brine shrimp and … microalgae.
As to financing, massive, I mean massive amounts of money are being spent to counter salinity; for example, 665 km of earthworks and giant open channels in SA near Keith, to stave off forv another few years the encroaching salinisation.
As to the argument often trotted out against growing oil-yield crops because it will displace food or fodder crops (leading to famine, sky falling in, yada yada) salinity affected agricultural land is already or soon will not be fit to grow anything, except perhaps microalgae.
Okay then, how much agricultural land is affected by salinity?
Answer: 1.97 mil. hectares.
Gross area in Australia affected by salinity? 57,000 sq km. And by 2050 it will be 170,000 sq km.
Growing microalgae won’t solve salinity but we might as well do something productive with the land.
RobertM,
I’m fully aware of what is available in electric 2 wheel vehicles. A 5 minute google search reveals dozens if not hundreds of low power electric cycles available from China.
That does not make them safe. A vehicle that must occupy general carriage ways must be able to match the general traffic speed to be safe. Our stupid NSW RTA have maintained for many years that any vehicle with power over 250 Watts must be road registered and cannot use footpaths. This is despite most electric wheelchairs being around 3000 watt power and most 4 wheeled aged mobility scooters being powered at around 1400 watts.
That is not the point. I want to experiment. But I want to start with a worked solution able to be made from spare car parts.
Robert Merkel:
Only in recent decades.
Apart from that used to correct phosphorus and trace-element defiencies, doesn’t the biggest slice of fertilizer disappear down a black hole between acceptable levels of production and optimal levels of production?